


Rivers Blue

by Archenfane



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexuality, Depression, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Drug Addiction, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Greg Lestrade & John Watson Friendship, Greg Lestrade & Sherlock Holmes Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, John Watson is a Saint, M/M, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Pre-Reichenbach, Protective Big Brother Mycroft, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Harm, Sherlock Holmes & Molly Hooper Friendship, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock's Violin, Sherlock-centric, Smut, Underage Drug Use, Virginity, bisexuality is valid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-05 00:01:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17314277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archenfane/pseuds/Archenfane
Summary: When Sherlock falls into old habits, John is there to pick him back up. As their relationship develops, John steadily learns more about the Holmes family and the skeletons in their closet.





	1. Chapter 1

His name is winding when coming from John’s mouth. A breathy word stretched long and wide into his ears. It’s the doctor voice, too crisp and too clear to be John, not really. So if the trailing word chanted over and over in his ear irritates him, it’s fully because John isn’t being John enough for Sherlock’s liking because the word is too much. Too lingering, too soft, too terse, too intruding, too long. And that’s not John – that’s the doctor.

His shoulder blades grate against the floor like his name in his head, noticeable and unwanted but he’s high enough to smudge away the pain, blur it into the background with the rest of his senses. Wiggling free from John’s grasp – or, rather, making a bloody good attempt – spreads the sensation of contact over his shoulder and onto his front.

The floor is solid.

“Sherlock, what have you taken? Can you hear me?”

His eyes see light as everything rushes to his head. John is tugging at his middle and then, all too suddenly, he’s drowning.

Sherlock envisions a sea of tonal blues, savage blues whispering horrid sounds in a cacophony of colour. Over it all, he hears himself pleading but, alas, the jarring notes collide in crashing waves, cymbals clapping over and under and around his head.

The fingers on his neck wake him up. Wake him up? Alert him.

John is feeling his pulse, wrapped snugly around Sherlock and pulling him into a warm chest – _John’s_ warm chest.

When he notices the detective’s eyes blinking in a daze, not quite relaxed, he pats the shoulder under his left hand.

“It’ll be over soon,” John reminds him steadily. The doctor voice is long gone – along with the hours, Sherlock suspects – and John is left, holding him securely.

His eyes float over John’s face, which is blurred in the burning daylight, as words are spoken to the top of his head.

Constant reassurance that he’s having a bad trip, that these feelings will end, and that Sherlock is safe, quells the worries in his head but something is still niggling at his mind.

His chest rumbles with angry butterflies.

  
  


On the day that Sherlock awakens, he is alone and deemed quite well enough to handle a scolding. That is, judging by the look John gives him when he enters the sitting room.

Sherlock is permitted enough time to amble over to the couch and curl into himself, smothering his face against the cushions. John fiddles with the kettle in the kitchen, filling a second cup in what must be pity for the other man.

However, pity only goes so far and John’s expression shifts once he’s filled both cups. He stares ahead of him for a moment, during which Sherlock takes the time to shuffle into a seated position, wilfully ignoring the scattered papers near his desk as his line of sight drops.

“Where are they?” He approaches Sherlock’s aching form with a cup of tea balanced on a saucer. It clinks against the table when he sets it down, filling the room. It’s replaced by the sugar cubes, which plop into Sherlock’s drink and not his own.

John never did take his with sugar. Sherlock, on the other hand, cannot resist temptation.

“Or did you take them all?” John speaks once more, garnering for an answer.

In substitute, Sherlock regretfully nods at the skull on the mantel. His gaze is followed, then traced until John has in his grasp several clear bags of different substances.

One small bottle of morphine, untouched.

“Jesus, Sherlock,” he sighs, reaching up to rub his forehead. Sherlock’s tendencies include morphine and cocaine, which is bad enough, but these…

“It was a danger night,” Sherlock insists, “I don’t need them anymore, take them away.”

“I will be taking them away Sherlock.” John spins around and strides toward the table. “God help me, it’s like you’re trying to get yourself addicted to anything you can get your hands on! Which, in your case, tends to be just about everything!”

Sherlock stills, reaching forward for his tea. He leaves the saucer on the table, hoping not to betray the tremor in his fingers.

However, John’s not an idiot, as much as he allows the detective to think so. He sits, breathing out sharply. This time, he places the drugs on the corner of the wood, furthest from Sherlock, and reaches for his hands. He takes the tea away and sits it on the wood, mindless of the saucer.

“So it was a danger night,” He confirms.

It was. Truly. And while Mycroft’s use of the term is far more liberal, John understands more than most that the night was just that – one fraught with danger. Recreation was far from his mind as he swallowed his new delivery from Wiggins.

Sherlock doesn’t answer.

“Is tonight a danger night?” John is still holding Sherlock’s hands. In fact, he pulls him from his thoughts with the lightest squeeze then forces a pleasant expression – not quite a smile but certainly not the scowl from earlier.

How does Sherlock tell him that every night is a danger night?

A knock startles him out of the long moment, more so than he would like to admit. Thankfully, it gives him an out. Somewhere to run.

“Certainly not,” he says, pulling back his hands briskly. He feels John’s eyes follow him as he approaches the front door but the doctor says nothing.

He’s met with Lestrade’s harsh gaze, scanning his pallor, bloodshot eyes, and the rosacea around his nostrils and lips. The latter from a night of sobbing into what was undeniably John’s arms.

Lestrade looks to John for an explanation, mouth parted. With Lestrade knowing more about Sherlock’s history than even John, he must realise what’s happened.

Unfortunately for the man in question, Lestrade starts realising too much.

“Danger night,” John explains but Lestrade’s gaze drops to Sherlock’s arms, eyes questioning.

“You have a case.” Sherlock typically hates pointing out the obvious, however, it becomes necessary when he struggles under Lestrade’s scrutiny.

“Not anymore!” – That gets him talking – “No drugs during casework, Sherlock, that was the deal.”

Lestrade sighs at the grimace emerging on Sherlock’s face but John is unwavering.

“I’m taking him to Molly this afternoon.” He lifts the teacups, which had long since gone cold, and takes them to the kitchen, where he continues to announce his secret plans for Sherlock’s day. “I’ll let you know when the detox is over.”

“You’re taking me where?” He starts walking to the kitchen and that’s when Lestrade announces that he’s got to head back to the Yard.

“I’ll walk you out.” John abandons the unclean dishes and gives Sherlock a firm look – _stay put_ – before leading Lestrade down the stairs. No doubt arranging exactly how they plan to nanny him until he’s clean.

Sherlock closes his eyes and exhales deeply, trying to block out the distant voices of John and Lestrade speaking at the foot of the stairs.

Silently, his hand reaches out to the vial of morphine.

  
  


“Oh, have you got a cold?”

Molly’s naïve concern when John frogmarches Sherlock into the mortuary only rubs salt in his figurative wound. And if said wound is seeping and raw, it would be very much similar to his nose and eyes, which are both wet and painful.

Nothing is quite as painful as the slowly growing desire for something – anything – to get him high.

Molly’s face darkens as Sherlock vibrates his way over to an empty seat nearby her desk but, despite the tremors, John can feel the heat radiating from him.

“Sherlock’s using again,” John explains needlessly, catching the other man’s arm when it jerks out at his chest.

“Food,” he barks, “please.”

John looks desperately at Molly as he eases the stiff arm back into it’s trembling position by Sherlock’s side. “Give him a look over for me?”

Molly’s lips turn up in agreement, but there’s no happiness in her eyes. Especially when she looks towards Sherlock, who’s gripping himself for dear life.

John dashes off, leaving room for Sherlock to curl over and release one sob. Molly sits in her own chair, wheeling closer so she can investigate.

“It’ll be over by the end of the week.” She tells him softly, fingers tracing the edges of his cuffs until she finds the button.

His arm jerks back, just enough for Molly to notice. Her hands still for a moment while she searches Sherlock’s face, then she pulls free the button to expose the damaged skin underneath. The track marks are dark and surrounded by bruising.

The bruising, however, is cut open by more than a few controlled lines of scarring.

“Sherlock, have you—” Molly broaches but Sherlock’s volatile expression startles her into silence.

“I haven’t bloody cut myself!” He hisses, then closes his eyes and, finally, his face slackens.

“Let’s clean these up,” Molly redirects, “though I’m sure John has already taken care of you.”

“Molly, I’m sorry.” He breathes, watching her go into a nearby cupboard, where he knows she keeps the first aid kit.

She shakes her head, avoiding the old scars as she rubs a wet rub over the injection sites. She reaches for her arm to do the same. Sherlock turns his head away, not bothering to wipe his eyes when they start to get watery. Whether it’s from the withdrawal or the sentimentality he feels plagued with, Molly’s seen him in worse states. Both Molly and Lestrade have.

“Not for two weeks,” Sherlock admits. The last evidence of his misadventures is on his legs, the last of the scabbing wearing away.

“I’ll believe you when I see them.” The tone of her voice isn’t unpleasant and Sherlock knows she’s not being unfair. “Is that—Is that why you started using again?”

It’s not, but Molly doesn’t need to know why. He’s just about to nod when John strides through the doors with a sandwich in hand and he’s suddenly reminded of the horrible ache in his stomach.

Molly’s soft grip on his wrist becomes a secure hold. He doesn’t quite pick up on the meaning with his drug-addled brain. As he looks at her in confusion, at the grip that’s not quite pinning him down but is trying to keep him still, it occurs to him.

_Let John see._

The very thought is so shocking that, when John stands beside them both with his good gotten gains, the only movement Sherlock actually makes is the uncontrollable shivering of his transport. John looks between them, at Molly’s lowered face (she can’t bear to look John in the eye, not when the memory of Lestrade’s face after the last time is fresh in her mind) and the tear-stricken mess that is Sherlock.

Then John looks down.

Immediately, he recognises the pattern of scars on his arms for what they are: self-harm. The track marks, dark and intrusive, he had expected. Not this. Not of Sherlock – his egotistical, arrogant, dispassionate cock of a best friend.

No words come out, but John’s arm immediately moves around Sherlock’s head and draws it into his torso.

“Eat this,” he reminds the man, offering the sandwich over.

Sherlock takes it, sniffing uncomfortably.

It’s painful to hold himself up, with the ache in his muscles, but the sandwich does make him feel better. As does the fact that John sits with him as Molly takes his blood, perched on the table with a hand on the back of his chair, close enough for Sherlock to feel soothed but not quite touching.

Molly answers the careful questions John has about his self-harm – where he does it and when did he stop.

Sherlock’s aware he has an addictive personality. From sugary snacks and murder cases to self-harm and drug abuse, he can’t quite restrain himself once he’s found something that gives him a thrill.

A high.

They’ve been in this room before, Molly and Sherlock. Lestrade usually had to force him to the one doctor he trusted to examine him without too much sentiment. 

The last time, less than two months before John moved in, Sherlock had shown up at St Bart’s. After vomiting over one of the fresh corpses and leaving a mess for Molly, he passed out. Lestrade had been the one to prop him up in the faculty toilets, sitting on the ground with Sherlock tightly grasped in his arms to ensure he wouldn’t fall and crack open his skull.

He’d never expected the words that came from his mouth.

“Cocaine, morphine…” Molly offers Sherlock a tissue from her desk, drawing him from his thoughts.

“Heroin,” John adds, quietly. He smoothes a hand over Sherlock’s forehead, watching him get sicker and sicker by the second. Thankfully, his fever isn’t dangerously high.

“Ah.” Molly nods.

It’s not one Sherlock tends to indulge in, because of the God-awful withdrawal, but sometimes the urge is too strong to resist and the last few weeks have been…

“Sherlock?” John’s shaking his shoulders lightly. When Sherlock responds, John packs the sandwich he doesn’t quite remember eating half of into its cardboard casing and pats his upper arm. “Time to go home?”

When he doesn’t answer and, instead, sniffs weakly, John grabs another tissue for the way back and ushers him to his feet.

Dazed, the trip outside is a blur, but Sherlock is quite well enough to recognise the long, black car waiting for them on the kerb. He’ll never be too drugged to forget that.

Instead of hailing a taxi, John obliges and ushers Sherlock into the car, where Mycroft sits facing them. His umbrella is propped up on the seat, making it clear he’s claiming that side for himself.

No matter, John reaches over Sherlock for his seatbelt, noting that he’s slick with sweat and shaking quite profusely.

“Brother mine.” Mycroft watches John keep Sherlock sitting upright as the car moves, attempting to prevent him from curling into the fetal position in discomfort. His hand grasps at John’s sleeve begging wordlessly for something, anything, to stop the horrible want in his veins.

“We’ve lectured him already,” John advises wisely.

Though he’s not quite showing it, Sherlock felt an incredible amount of gratitude at that moment, and even some for his brother when he lacked a lecture to behold.

“My men have searched the flat.” Mycroft opts for instead. “If you are hiding anything, Sherlock, it will be located and destroyed.”

“Don’t mess up my sock index.” He murmurs, rubbing fiercely at his eyes.

“We’re almost home, you can have a nice bath.” John pulls his arms away, then pats his knee once before hesitating.

In the distracted haze of his mind, he almost forgets what he revealed to John today.

“Please.” He bites out to John, his composure (or what was left of it) breaking. But John has an alcoholic sister so he reaches for Sherlock’s hand and rubs his aching fingers until Baker Street comes into view.

Even as the need in his veins grows and grows into a near-unstoppable force, Sherlock knows, deep down, that pleading is futile.


	2. Chapter 2

Both Mycroft’s driver and whoever was in the passenger’s seat have to help Sherlock from the car and it hurts John to watch but he knows it’s for his own good. He’s only hoping he doesn’t have to strap his roommate to a bed at any point during the week.

They’re holding Sherlock firmly but not roughly as they guide him up the stairs. Between them they fight off his struggles and support his body when it falls slack in their arms, exhausted from moving.

When they enter the flat, Mycroft’s men seem to be mostly done, inspecting the experiments in the kitchen with blank expressions.

“Do not touch.” Surprisingly, it is Mycroft who tells them to leave the various body parts alone in a firm tone.

His eyes watch over his brother, sees the need in his eyes, then sharply turns away. If these (slightly worrisome) experiments can keep Sherlock ‘high’ without a need for drugs, so be it.

“Something.” Sherlock, on the couch, doubles over and turns his face. “John, anything, please.”

“I’ll run you a bath.” John directs at Sherlock with a grim expression, then gives Mycroft a silent glance.

_Watch him._

When he glances towards his team of spooks, his eyes drift back down to the table, where they carefully gathered Sherlock’s growing collection of illegal narcotics. To the left, an A5-sized plastic bag.

In which, three pristine razors are contained.

  
  


John places the toothbrush in Sherlock’s hand. He’s propped up on the toilet lid, looking furious and sad all at the same time. He waves a hand at the sink while dropping the fingers of his other hand below the water level in the bath to test the heat. It’s perfectly lukewarm, just right for Sherlock’s current state.

Sherlock refuses to speak and opts for swiping his teeth with the toothbrush, arm slow and struggling to maintain level with each movement. John recognises how weak Sherlock is and, to save him cracking his head on the floor, steadies the man after turning off the tap.

“In you get.”

“Leave.”

“Not a bloody chance.” John inspects him carefully before relenting in his glare. He takes the wet toothbrush, cleans it in the sink, and then places it away. All the while, considering exactly how he’s going to get through detoxing Sherlock. The man is difficult on a good day.

“It’ll cool you down.” John kneels before the toilet seat and starts undoing the buttons on Sherlock’s shirt, refusing to be influenced by his watery eyes. It’s just the lacrimation, he tells himself.

Sherlock attempts to object to the help, throwing a flurry of curses at John and even managing to undo one button with his quivering fingers before throwing his arms down in a fuss and leaving John to finish the rest.

“Tell me if you need more warm water.” John’s voice softens as Sherlock’s body starts to uncover itself. He’s much paler than John’s ever seen. And, ignoring the redness in his face, the lanky man’s body is chalky and white. Sherlock manages to take off his own trousers with John supporting his weight.

As his fingers weave underneath the band of his briefs, he hears John clear his throat and turn his head. Strange, Sherlock mulls. Considering John must have seen more than a few penises during his time as a doctor, he doesn’t see why his own should be any different.

Recalling that god awful book Mycroft gave him during their formative years, he knows there’s nothing out of the ordinary with his body. Then, scolding himself for being slow, he recalls the scabbing on his thighs.

His knees buckle.

“Sherlock!” John is there in a second to grab him. “Sherlock, are you ok?”

“Fine.” He bites out, shrugging John off. When he tries to get into the bath on his own, normally an easy task, John’s hands are all over him, annoyingly gripping his arms and back until Sherlock is in somewhat of a lying position. Somewhat – his gangly body is folded up enough at the knees to actually fit his torso in the bath but it’s no bother because, immediately, the tepid water calms him right down.

“Better?” John reaches over him for the bar of soap on the edge of the bath, near the tap. Sherlock kicks out with his wet foot but he’s too slow and, soon, John is working soap into his turquoise loofah. It’s the German soap he got as a gift for his last birthday.

“I don’t know why you buy this stuff.” John laughs in good nature, though he does smile as he inhales the soap’s fruity perfume.

“It’s from my mother.” Sherlock typically opts for a more heady smell than the light aroma of fruit, but he doesn’t deny that it’s quite nice. Softer than the woodsy smells he’s accustomed to buying.

John nods silently, then starts moving the loofah over his front. Sherlock would object once more but his exhausted body, with it’s near constant aches and shivers, is more important to him than wounded pride.

“Your mother,” he brings up, only after cleaning Sherlock’s sweat-slick arms and chest. Moving onto his back, he must find a certain security in not looking at his face.

“I suspect Mycroft suggested soap, over her ghastly ideas of what she thinks I would like, however, this particular scent must be of her own choosing.”

God forbid Violet Holmes provided him with anything that wasn’t an assault on his senses.

  
  


Long after Mycroft leaves and long after he helps Sherlock to his bed, John hears a horrible wailing from the other man’s violin. Played with much less precision than usual, descending into a chilling tremolo.

Wondering exactly why Sherlock is playing in the first place when he should be resting, he takes to the stairs. Though it’s not only his footsteps he hears when he reaches the bottom. Sherlock is pacing chaotically, dancing unrestrained across the living room to a beat John can’t hear.

“Sherlock.”

He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even seem to have heard.

“Sherlock, can you hear me?” John approaches quickly, reaching for the hands the grasp his violin, sliding over the wood in his clammy grip. “What have you taken?”

“Nothing,” Sherlock whispers, meeting his gaze. His eyes are glazed and spasming, almost to the point of concern until Jon realises that his friend is terrified.

“Let’s stop this.” John rests his hands on the body of the instrument and draws it away. Sherlock’s hands are twitching, as if the bow is still playing until, all of a sudden, he drops his beloved violin on the ground. The bow remains in his hand as he draws it up to his face.

John’s chest constricts as he watches Sherlock hunch in on himself, sobbing messily yet quietly to himself. He’s unrestrained. Is this what he was afraid of? Coming apart without the excuse of drugs?

John moves forward, stepping around the violin, and pulls Sherlock’s head down to his shoulder. The detective doesn’t resist, and he might even move in closer to the embrace, but John isn’t quite understanding the situation enough to tell.

A light knock interrupts them at the door.

“Is everything alright?” Mrs Hudson’s head sneaks in, only for her to gasp when she sees the state Sherlock is in.

John gives her a quick look but doesn’t move, keeping his hand on the other man’s neck.

“I’ll put on some tea,” their landlady decides, hurrying through to the kitchen to give them a moment alone.

As much as John appreciates the gesture, it’s time to figure out what actually happened.

“Let’s sit, shall we?” He murmurs into Sherlock’s ear, keeping a hand on his shoulder as he leads him to the couch.

Sherlock drops into the seat, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes as if willing the tears to disappear. John sits closer than he typically would – their knees are touching and it’s not entirely uncomfortable. The thought of dealing with a crying Sherlock is, however, and he has simply no idea where to start.

In all the time that they’ve spent together, John has seen Sherlock ‘cry’ for cases and clients but never earnestly. It’s different from the proud tears he cries as an act – Sherlock’s face is crumpled and he’s curled in on himself as his shoulders shake. His lips are reddened around the edges, as is his sniffling nose.

Before John can even begin to start, Sherlock’s head turns and, even though his eyes are closed and he isn’t quite facing John, he knows that the words “danger night” are addressed to him.

“Yes, ok.” John agrees, then notices the robe Sherlock’s wearing. He shuffles around, finding the square pocket and taking Sherlock’s phone from where it’s normally kept.

“Would you like to listen to your music?” John asks but he has it playing in seconds anyway and Sherlock settles if only until he sees his abandoned instrument. John follows his gaze.

“It’s fine!” He insists, lurching out of his seat. Plucking it from the floor, he dusts off the body before sitting it at Sherlock’s other side.

The man’s white fingers carefully place the bow beside it.

“Would you like some tea, Sherlock?” Mrs Hudson calls from the kitchen, just as she emerges with a tray. On top of which, there’s a tissue to dry his face.

John takes the tissue with wordless thanks and sits back in his spot beside Sherlock, who is no longer crying but doesn’t look particularly better.

The playlist John picked skips onto the next piece before the first is finished, so he assumes these are Sherlock’s own compositions. He doesn’t bother to change it and allows the music to play as he watches Sherlock wipe his own face.

“Have you…?” John’s face turns concerned when Sherlock dares to glance. “I mean, you know…”

Sherlock scratches at his trousers, just over where he knows the scabbing is and says absolutely nothing. It feels suffocating to have people this close, watching him sweat and cry and sniff, all while looking like something Molly pulled off the slab.

“Oh, dear, Sherlock – have you been using again?” Mrs Hudson must notice, of course, when she sees his face this closely. As much as Sherlock… attaches a certain value to her life, it becomes difficult for him to breathe with her this close.

John, on the other hand, is a wonderful saviour who suggests they have their tea upstairs. When Mrs Hudson grows more worried, he assures her – “we’re taking turns to get him off the sweeties” – thanks her for the tea, and all but herds her from the room.

With the quiet, John turns from the door and watches his friend closely.

“Trousers off,” he decides, gesturing, “shirt, too.”

“Buy me dinner first,” Sherlock deflects, pawing at his face.

“Sherlock, I need to know if you’ve hurt yourself and I’m sorry,” he emphasises, “but I _cannot take your word_.”

He hesitates, of course he does, but eventually Sherlock steps out of his trousers and allows John to help with his shirt.

Underneath, his pale skin has no new cuts but the scabbing of his healing wounds is broken open and oozing blood slowly. John doesn’t quite know if he should reprimand this – if it was drug-induced discomfort that led him to pick at the scabs or an inclination towards self harm.

“They don’t heal if you pick them,” John settles on, watching Sherlock’s face carefully.

His eyelids flutter as he looks down, face crumpling as he threatens to cry. However, it’s only for a second before he steels himself once more.

“Danger night,” Sherlock repeats, breathing out heavily.

John nods, disregards the tea, and wraps Sherlock in his robe. Clothes can wait until the morning. He can’t imagine a dress shirt and trousers being particularly comfy, anyway. With no objections from Sherlock, he leads his friend towards his bedroom and helps him slump onto the bed.

What he didn’t expect was “stay”.

  
  


When Sherlock’s eyes open, he’s facing a bundle of warmth and quite decides that he never wants to move because he’s perfectly comfortable.

His stomach makes itself aware, which isn’t all too bad – he shifts a little and awakens his makeshift pillow.

“Good morning.” John greets him, sitting up and raising his arm. He’s still dressed so he must not have planned on staying the night.

Sherlock’s a bit miffed, he did recall his request, but John did stay so he forgets that and, instead, focuses on the new feeling in his stomach.

“Bathroom.” He blurts, turning stock still.

John’s head turns, looks him over, and the moment of realisation is clear. His ears even twitch slightly as his eyebrows fall and his facial expression becomes one of urgency. Suddenly, he’s flying around the bed and grabbing Sherlock, rushing him in his pants-and-robe-clad state to the toilet, where he immediately drops to his knees. Sherlock’s throat burns as the contents of his stomach rip through him, projecting harshly into the bowl.

His abdomen cramps painfully as a second wave hits him and John is there, a hand on his back and holding a tissue to his face when he finally stops dry heaving. His mouth is coated in an awful film and Sherlock couldn’t stand the thought of food now even if his stomach hadn’t tied itself in a knot.

The need for morphine is stronger than any other, but Sherlock just manages to restrain himself from begging.

“That’ll be the morphine,” John sighs, “yeah?”

Sherlock nods, turning his head to splutter another time. John sighs, pulling his phone free from his pocket.

**Be there in twenty.**

“I called Greg to come over,” he lets Sherlock know, after reading the message. That was over ten minutes ago.

“Who?”

John doesn’t entertain him, knowing he knows full well who John’s talking about.

“He’s your friend and he’s concerned,” John tells him as if it’s something John expects he doesn’t know. He’s not wrong.

Sherlock pauses, head still lolling in the toilet.

“Now, he’s almost here and I think he’ll want you to be wearing clothes, do you agree?”

  
  


Lestrade tops the moment he passes the threshold to the flat, looking awkwardly at Sherlock, bundled up in his bedsheets, while John stands with his arms crossed.

“You are wearing underwear…” He waves his hand at Sherlock, who would roll his eyes if he could think over his stomach.

“Thankfully, yes.” John gives him an exhasperated smile. He takes Lestrade’s place in the doorway. “Do try and get him to eat; I’m just going for milk.”

Lestrade nods and waits carefully for John to leave.

“Breakfast?” He offers.

Sherlock closes his eyes, huffing, and turns away.

“I didn’t think so,” he murmurs. Lestrade ambles towards the couch, looks at it for a moment, and then sits down. He leans forward on his knees. “Molly told me you’ve stopped.”

Sherlock’s eyes twitch.

“Yes,” he answers, “for two weeks.”

“That’s good.” Lestrade turns to face him. “I know it’s more difficult than the drugs.”

That’s painfully true. While drugs distract him and give him somewhere to run, Sherlock’s always needed the consistency of a blade. Something to do every couple of days, just to keep the grim repetition.

It’s been easier with John around but there’s always been something in his gut – a timer – and it’s so much more difficult to control that urge.

“I know John is doing the detox but—”

“Sentiment,” Sherlock warns, interrupting.

Lestrade’s face changes. He glances towards Sherlock’s thighs, then breathes out slowly.

“John’s a good man,” he says instead. _Good for you, Sherlock._

Sherlock doesn’t need good men, he needs people to keep their sentiment away from him. It’s contagious. He’s on the verge of ignoring Lestrade, but then he stands up, signalling that he’s finished.

“Lestrade!” Sherlock’s voice surprises even himself. He glances down, pausing. After a moment, his thoughts verge away from drugs to something oe appropriate to be asking a detective. “I want chips.”

“Chips,” he repeats dumbly, frowning at Sherlock.

“I know a fantastic fish shop just of Marylebone Road,” he confirms, sitting upright a little more.

“Alright, then.” Lestrade’s eyes shift to the sheets. “Not in that.”

  
  


By the time John returns, Lestrade is watching him scream at Jeremy Kyle with a plastic box of chips, spilling over with a dent in the middle where Sherlock has been nibbling, too hungry from the cocaine not to eat but in too much abdominal pain for the morphine to eat too much too fast.

Greg’s is almost empty by this point, though the owner did give them both extra. Something about Sherlock putting up shelves and also looking like he hasn’t eaten in weeks.

And this is when John bursts through the door, looking almost as red in the eyes as Sherlock.

Lestrade looks up, then takes his carton to the kitchen to throw away. As he passes John, the shorter man’s eyes flicker quickly between both before landing resolutely on Sherlock.

“You’re eating.”

Sherlock barely has a moment to answer before John is grabbing him and drawing him into a tight hug, little regard for the chips in his lap.

“Don’t you ever bloody do that again, do you understand?” John squeezes him tighter. “This isn’t the game, this is your life and _I need you alive_.”

_And why is that?_


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s bloody awful,” Lestrade startles John from his quiet thinking with his comment, “and it doesn’t help that it’s him, does it?”

John frowns at that, glancing to where Sherlock is fast asleep on the couch, medicated with a small dose of paracetamol that should give him some relief from his fever and the abdominal cramps.

“What do you mean?” He questions mirthlessly, to which the detective laughs.

“Sherlock Holmes and the great war against emotions.” Lestrade gestures theatrically in the air with one hand, then loses his spirit. “I’ve watched that man lose control more than once over the years – every time he gets off his tits on drugs, then wanders back onto my crime scenes covered in blood as if everything’s just ok.”

John lowers his head, knowing that Lestrade is completely correct.

“Now that he’s got you, I was hoping he’d settle down but I guess one person doesn’t change you like that.” 

“‘Got me’ – Greg, for the love of God, I am not gay!” John puts his head between his hands, then gives one more look towards Sherlock. “And I’m almost certain he’s not even human.”

“What are you, then? Because Sherlock is bloody unnatural but he’s human and he likes you.” Lestrade argues, trying to keep his voice quiet enough so Sherlock won’t stir.

“‘Likes me’,” John parrots, incredulous. “ _Sherlock._ ”

“Yeah, actually, more than most.” Lestrade prods him in the chest. “And it’s bloody awful but you need to be here for him as… whatever you are. A friend.”

John used to see this look from Clara, his sister’s ex-wife. A haunted look. It’s watching someone pave the way to their own death. It’s watching someone fall and feeling like you can’t catch them.

It’s the look of a man falling on his own.

“I will,” he promises, “Greg, how are things with you?”

“Old and bitter,” he retorts but there’s a soft smile at the edge of his lips.

“John?” Sherlock moans from the couch, his arm reaching out to paw at the coffee table as his eyes draw open.

“I’d best be off.” Greg shrugs on his coat as John makes his way towards Sherlock and the soft click of the door is the last thing he hears before Sherlock is grabbing the front of his shirt.

John reflexively looks to the door as it closes but Sherlock’s surprisingly cold hands turn his attention away.

“Lock the door,” Sherlock demands, “and the windows, too. Lock them, John!”

John’s brow furrows as Sherlock practically shoves him across the room, half tripping over his robe. John pulls over the bolt and turns the lock before giving Sherlock another confused look.

“Everything is locked, Sherlock, what’s wrong?”

“I…” He gestures toward the couch, with a sweaty, shivering hand. “I…”

“Bad dreams?” John guesses but Sherlock’s voice cuts him off.

“Siger—I mean, John—I’m…” Sherlock twists suddenly and, instead of puking like John expects him to, his body tips forward.

Luckily, his head goes straight for the couch. His body crumples into a flaccid heap, catching John completely unaware.

_Who the hell is Siger?_

  
  


Sherlock’s head is swirling when he wakes up. Just out of the corner of his eye, he sees John Watson, pulling covers over his body until he feels quite warm.

“Go to sleep, Sherlock,” John says, giving his eyes a worried look before standing up straight.

“Stay,” he moans.

“I’m just getting you a bottle of water.”

“Stay.”

  
  


John’s eyes draw open slowly, pulled apart to bask in the cool white stream of light. Instantly, he wonders where he is.

A disgruntled noise comes from his side and Sherlock’s face firmly plants itself on his chest, pinning him down. John breathes or, perhaps, sighs.

_Sherlock._

His black hair is resting in loose curls over his chest, hiding how sunken his features are.

Clear white skin, pink lips, and raven hair. He’s like Snow White if Snow White was an arrogant sod.

Then again…

Like this, a bundle of gentle curls over John’s chest, he can almost imagine Sherlock as a woman. Or, just maybe, not.

A lithe, slender body with broad shoulders and small hips. Not at all curvy, but straight. All harsh angles and long proportions ( _long proportions_ ) with none of the curves he’d appreciate on a woman. Sherlock is sharp edges.

Why doesn’t that bother him? The lack of femininity? Why doesn’t it bother John to have Sherlock nestled in the crook of his arm, syphoning away all of his body heat and pressing down on his torso?

Sherlock is whites and greys and blacks while women are more colourful. But Sherlock is a great redwood standing shaded in fog, the grass around him blanketed in crispy frost. And beside him could stand an elm.

No, of course not. John can’t think that way – he knows he likes women so why is he entertaining the thought of anything else? And, besides, Sherlock is married to the game.

“Where am I?” Sherlock murmurs, his head lolling even though his arms are pushing him into an upright position. He catches John’s gaze, then lifts a hand to rub his head.

“Your bedroom,” he says and, before there can be any confusion, he adds, “you asked me to stay.”

Sherlock must not find this surprising, though he props himself up against his pillows and fixes John with a glare.

“Must you be obtuse?” He snaps, “I don’t remember getting here.”

“I carried you when you were running around shouting about the windows and decided to faint.”

“After.”

“Sorry?”

“After – If you’d carried me during then I couldn’t have been running, could I?” Sherlock’s eyes turn cold as John makes his way over to his slippers. He considers the now-empty spot beside him unhappily. At least John is wearing his pyjamas this time, as opposed to the previous night.

“I guess not, Sherlock,” John mutters, grabbing the bottle of water from where he’d left it on Sherlock’s desk. Upon ignoring the request he made to stay, he was thoroughly unhappy with John when he did return, half asleep but moodier than ever.

“Then again, I was trying to think of who Siger could be that the thought of him could make you faint,” John adds, trying to rub some of the sleep from his eyes. When Sherlock doesn’t answer, he opens his eyes and looks up.

“Sherlock?”

His eyes are far away, staring half between John and the window.

“Sherlock, who’s Siger?”

As if someone kicked him in the stomach, Sherlock’s face takes on an awful shade. John barely has time to move before he’s throwing up into his bedsheets, somehow still expressionless.

“Over the edge.” John looks away from the mess and guides Sherlock’s head to the side when he doesn’t move it himself but, instead of the nausea he expects, Sherlock slips away and crosses the room. John’s head turns to the sheets, letting out a breath as the door to the connected bathroom locks shut.

  
  


In the time it takes John to haul the dirty sheets to the washing machine and put on the spare – dark blue and completely contrasting with the grey and white pillow slips – Sherlock is still in the bathroom.

“Sherlock?” He crosses the bedroom, raps a couple of times on the door, and waits. “Are you being sick?”

But there’s no reply. There’s also no rugged breathing or puking, from what John can hear. Just silence.

“Sherlock?” It’s suddenly occurring to him that the door is locked and his best friend is an incredibly sneaky drug addict in the worst stages of withdrawal. He tries the handle, not particularly expecting it to open. “Sherlock, are you alright?”

Nothing.

“Open this door, Sherlock, now!” John demands. When there’s still no reply or movement and the only imagine John sees in his head is of Sherlock in their flat, draped over the coffee table with wide pupils, he grits his teeth.

The door only withstands one or two strikes with his good shoulder before John can break the lock and ram his way in.

Sherlock is sitting in the small bathtub, eyes staring dead ahead. Gone is his irritating side-kick, Sherlock is still and quiet. There’s blood on the insides of his legs, not so much that John would have to make a call, but more than John had expected.

He’d thought there would be cocaine dusting the porcelain sink or needles on the rug, but Sherlock looks desolate rather than high.

“Sherlock,” John breathes, sinking to his knees.

Without John even asking, the detective reaches his hand over and, when John opens his own, drops a small blade into his palm.

Sherlock’s knees are shaking but the rest of his body is eerily still.

“Sherlock,” he starts, stops, then continues, “why?”

He’s not crying as John would expect. He’s seen kids in his time as a doctor, just teenagers, with their wrists split open. They’d been sobbing, so had their families. Instead of being shaken or even disturbed, Sherlock seems surprised.

He murmurs a noise that John doesn’t quite catch, then tries to rub some of the blood from his fingers off on his thighs.

Aside from _Siger_ , the withdrawal can’t be easy for him. As well as giving up on self-harming, it must have felt like too much.

As private a man as Sherlock is, both Molly and Lestrade knew about this particular habit. Do they know who Siger is? Or, even, what? Or have they stumbled on Sherlock like this, alone, with no prompting?

John wants to apologise for what was clearly a trigger of some kind but doesn’t want to mention ‘Siger’ any further.

“I’m here,” he says instead, “and I’m going to get you cleaned up.”

He leaves those glassy eyes for what must only be seconds, sprinting to the nearest medical kit and bringing it back in haste. The bloodied razor, he does not bring back. Sherlock doesn’t need that.

John knows by now that Sherlock’s cravings should be in full force and, while he has heard him beg for drugs and complain about various hangups in the withdrawal process, the man is now practically unresponsive.

For Sherlock, that could either mean catatonia or another excursion to his mind palace.

“I’m just going to clean you up,” he gestures with the antiseptic wipes, carefully unravelling one. That doesn’t spur any movement but touching Sherlock’s thigh certainly does and his whole body jerks at once.

“It’s ok,” John assures him immediately. In his pocket, his phone grows heavier and heavier until John can no longer resist the urge to take it out.

**Sherlock not talking**   
**JW**

John leaves his phone, unlocked, on the edge of the bath. He manages to smoothly run the wipe over his right leg, clearing away the blood, before his phone chirps in response.

**And the problem?**   
**MH**

John wants to laugh bitterly at Mycroft’s complete apathy but Sherlock needs him right now so he makes his reply quick.

**He cut himself and he’s not talking**

The next reply is immediate.

**Intentionally?**   
**MH**

**I’ll be there soon.**   
**MH**

The texts come in quick succession and John doesn’t stop to think what they might mean.

“Your brother’s coming,” John tells Sherlock. Despite their friendship, John is still relatively new and it might help him to have someone else there that he trusts. Then again, it is Mycroft.

“Hopefully he won’t be too much of a cock,” John laughs, his throat tightening. It doesn’t evoke a response from Sherlock.

He jerks again when his leg is touched but, otherwise, remains perfectly still.

“Just cleaning,” John reminds him, “then we'll get you dressed for Mycroft, yeah?”

While John is cleaning, he can’t help but notice that the scars on his arms are laid out in neat, ordered rows, all corresponding lengths, while the marks on his legs are scattered, some deeper and longer than others. These are acts of passion while the cuts on his arms are habitual – an addiction.

So why would Sherlock choose to take his frustration, his sadness, and his hate out on his legs?

  
  


It takes Mycroft almost thirty minutes to show up, in which time John had to carry Sherlock to the living room and set him down on the couch. He’s wrapped up in his robe with nothing but briefs underneath.

In those thirty minutes, he has neither spoken nor moved. Not to get dressed and not to quell John’s worries.

Mycroft doesn’t bother with knocking, he walks right into the flat and turns furiously on John, not bothering to control his temper.

“What happened?” He barks, to which John raises his hands.

“First of all, calm down.” John watches Mycroft’s eyes turn to daggers. “Second of all, Sherlock locked himself in the bathroom and when I broke down the door he’d cut himself.”

Mycroft’s umbrella must be suffocating in that white-knuckled grip.

“Intentionally?” It’s bit out as a single word, no meanings attached, but it suddenly dawns on John that Sherlock's self-proclaimed arch-enemy might not know about his depressive habits.

“You don’t know?” John can’t help asking – it had seemed to be a well-known fact about Sherlock that only he had missed.

Mycroft rests his umbrella against the side of the couch and moves closer to Sherlock.

Expectedly, he lifts the sleeve first and looks at the white rows.

“His legs, actually,” John corrects, “though try not to touch him.”

Mycroft stiffens, rolls his shoulders, and lifts the robe just enough to see a strip of gauze taped over the inside of his leg, then a couple of lighter cuts left out in the open. Sherlock’s sudden spasm causes him to take a controlled step back.

“First time in two weeks,” John informs then, belatedly, “I just found out.”

Mycroft hesitates before he drops onto the opposite couch, eyes scanning his brother’s body. There’s nothing to suggest he’s anything more than just in withdrawal.

Then, thinking back, he supposes it’s not entirely unexpected.


	4. Chapter 4

“My,” Sherlock was at his bedroom door again. Three nights he’d been down from Oxford so far and, for those three nights, Sherlock had come to his room, eyes red and sniffling.

“My,” he whimpered, quietly padding his way into his older brother’s bedroom.

Despite the seven years age gap, Mycroft cares very deeply for Sherlock and, upon hearing him cry, again, for the third night in a row, he sat up in his bed and reached for the bedside lamp.

“Another nightmare?” He watched the child preteen climb into his bed and curl up into a tight ball. Sherlock hid his face under his bush of curly, black hair and refused to open his mouth. His eyes, big and round, watched Mycroft carefully as he turned around to face the younger boy.

“Do Mummy and Daddy know?”

“You mustn't tell.” Sherlock’s voice was quiet and unobtrusive. He was young and small and high pitched. Sherlock was still a child and Mycroft, rapidly approaching adulthood if not already in it, couldn’t find the heart to fault him.

“You were quiet at dinner,” he claimed instead, watching as Sherlock hid his face in the mattress.

“My tummy hurts.” Sherlock pulled the blanket over himself, almost completely covering him from sight.

“Stomach,” Mycroft corrected.

“It hurts,” Sherlock settled on.

“Have you told Mummy?” Mycroft pressed, yet again.

A pause, then the bundle twitched.

“S’not that bad. ‘M fine.”

Mycroft sighed. It always troubled him when his brother cried and the soft sobbing he was trying to stifle under the blanket was no exception.

“Come now, brother mine.” Mycroft peels back the covers and rests on the bed beside Sherlock, wrapping his arms around his shaking frame.

  
  


While John was in the kitchen making tea, Mycroft moved over to the same couch Sherlock is on.

“I understand,” Mycroft’s voice is hushed, “that this is difficult for you, Brother.”

And that’s it.

No scolding, no warnings against the dark clutches of narcotics. Mycroft sits beside Sherlock and John watches the pair of them from the kitchen.

_What a pair._

Two brothers, so emotionally constipated that they refuse to even see it in themselves.

“Tea, Mycroft?” John offers, bringing through a tray.

“No milk, no sugar,” Mycroft responds in just about the most normal voice John’s ever heard from the older Holmes.

John nods and, as he’s pouring, he catches him giving Sherlock a glance.

“Why don’t we watch some crap telly?” John suggests, attempting to soothe some of the awkwardness. “Sherlock loves yelling at Jeremy Kyle.”

Mycroft almost winces at that but, for Sherlock, he goes along with it.

_Seriously, what a pair._

  
  


“Siger.”

John had followed Mycroft into the kitchen after he’d taken the tray away (anything to get away from the God-awful TV). The government official freezes then turns around. Before his mouth opens, he glances through at Sherlock, ensuring he can’t hear. John had already taken those precautions.

“Where did you hear that name?” His eyes narrow, tracking John very closely as the shorter man edges closer.

“Sherlock, just after he woke up from a nightmare and fainted shortly after,” John retorts. “I thought you were his arch enemy.”

“I am.” Mycroft tenses. He reaches into his pocket and fiddles with a carton of cigarettes. John pushes open the window above the sink so Sherlock doesn’t feel tempted by the smell.

“Siger,” Mycroft says through a cloud of smoke, “is our father.”

John stares, opens his mouth for a second, and then promptly closes it.

“I should be going,” Mycroft considers, but John grabs his arm as he goes to check his pocket watch. It was purely on reflex, to stop another Holmes from running away and escaping his questions. When he does meet Mycroft’s eyes, there’s a threat to be seen.

“Why would Sherlock hurt himself at hearing his father’s name?” John asks, then tilts is head, positively done with the games. “And answer me, Mycroft.”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s my best friend,” John growls harshly.

“And he’s my brother.” Mycroft stills, takes a drag, then blows the smoke away. “Sherlock doesn’t appreciate the mention of Siger. I expect you to keep it that way, John Watson, and know this: this is something I cannot tell you about Sherlock.”

“You actually don’t know.” John bites out a laugh, smiling almost gloatingly at Mycroft, who sneers in response.

Siger. Never Daddy or Dad, just Siger.

Despite the fact that Sherlock and Mycroft are two of the most emotionally repressed people John’s ever met – and he was in the army – they’ve always insisted on addressing Mrs Holmes directly as ‘Mummy’. Never her name, not that John even knows what it is.

So what’s the difference?

  
  


Mycroft does leave, quickly after the mention of Siger, and it only takes another hour of crap telly before Sherlock shifts uncomfortably on the couch.

“John,” he says, sounding vaguely dazed but not expressly unhappy.

“How are you feeling?” John perks up, muting the TV and leaning forward on the armchair.

“Can we go to bed?” Sherlock’s eyes are dreamy and far-off. It’s not long past five but the other man looks like he needs the rest.

“We?” John clarifies, to which Sherlock nods after a good, long moment of preoccupation.

It’s been a long day, John decides, and perhaps it wouldn’t be the worst idea if Sherlock were to have some supervision. After all, tomorrow John’s at the clinic and he’ll have to make do with Molly, who graciously agreed to look after him.

“Alright, but I’m bringing biscuits.”

When John stands up, Sherlock’s head turns to him.

“Paracetamol?”

  
  


A new day brings with it new challenges.

John hesitates to leave Sherlock as they close in on the 72-hour mark, at which point the opiate withdrawal will peak. Morphine is certainly the bigger power at play here, with cocaine following as a close second.

As for now, Sherlock is curled up in his bed, naked except a fresh pair of underwear. Sherlock’s black tuft of hair is visible but not his face, as he is pointedly ignoring the doctor.

“I’ll only be gone until 5.” John reminds him, rounding the bed to look Sherlock in the eye.

“Now,” he says, “please, Sherlock, if there’s anything in the flat, you need to tell me before I go.”

“Nothing,” he claims but John leaned with Harry never to trust an addict.

He reaches for Sherlock’s hand, prying it away from the pillow he has smothered against his chest and holds it in both of his own.

Sherlock glances between John and his wrist, fully knowing what is about to come.

“Any razors?” John looks into his eyes, searching hopefully.

When the bundle of limbs curls up tighter and looks away from John, he gives up.

“My phone is going to be on all day.” John doesn’ let go of that hand. “And that doesn’t mean so you can tell me to bring you tea, Sherlock, that’s if you really feel that you need help. With drugs, with this…”

John looks down at the scars.

Sherlock twitches in his grasp, clearly uncomfortable but simply refusing not to show weakness. John is helping him, not judging him for his failures, because that’s what people like him do.

“Mycroft is just a call away if you need him, too.”

The moment John steals his hands away from Sherlock, he feels as though he has suffered a great loss. What a tragedy it would be for John to keep to himself.

Loath as he is to admit it, he’s become rather accustomed to his blogger. Nowadays, that means in his bed, pressing heat against Sherlock’s back and he cradles him close to his heart. Occasionally, Sherlock seeks out the heat on his own and wakes up on John’s chest, warm and content. Sherlock wouldn’t know how to even start playing the song of John’s heart on his violin. Though all he hears is a simple beat, something deep draws him in like a siren call.

Like a drug he just hasn’t tasted yet.

John does make sure Molly is here, at least, before he abandons Sherlock in favour of the coughing, sneezing masses.

“Why are men attracted to you, Molly?” Sherlock poses the question after he can’t quite stand to be with his own thoughts anymore – a siren call of a different intent, screaming inside his head.

But Molly looks offended and that simply wasn’t Sherlock’s aim, so he changes his words.

“How does one attract a man?”

Molly looks down at the bottled water she must have brought with her – it’s a different brand from the kind John likes – and smiles half-heartedly.

“You’re asking me?” She responds, nails curling around the label and fraying it.

“I need a woman’s opinion.”

Sherlock, despite a lifetime of hating the human race, finds something likeable in John. Despite his constant fight against boredom, the fact that John is mediocre doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s delightfully ordinary.

Mycroft, of course, would mock him for such emotions – or simply for having any at all – but the fact of the matter is this: he loves the game and, for reasons unbeknown to him, John has become a part of that game. It’s their game.

“Sherlock, what are you?” Molly laughs in her awkward way, eyes shifting down as she looks more and more like she wants to escape the conversation. When Sherlock betrays no sign of understanding, she elaborates, “Are you gay?”

“Oh, Molly,” Sherlock sighs, “I had expected a response of a higher calibre.”

“Well?”

“I simply do not understand why people insist on asking—”

“Sherlock!”

“Yes,” he relents, then furrows his brow. Is he gay? Heterosexuality or homosexuality – that’s the big question everyone likes to ask. But then what if he’s attracted to both genders? Or more? Perhaps unequally? Perhaps Sherlock is a panromantic demisexual with homoromantic inclinations but _why should that matter to everyone?_

“I don’t know,” he draws the blanket in closer, quickly boring of the conversation.

Can’t Sherlock just like someone – the first person he’s ever actually liked – without all the extra baggage? Can’t it just be his?

“You like John,” Molly deduces, not an uncommon leap to make.

Sherlock sticks one hand out of the covers and inspects its shaking, then draws it back in. Molly scoots her chair a little closer and rests her hand on the bundle. Sherlock glances at it, considering the hand carefully. It doesn’t move and Molly isn’t exactly looking at him. Probably a friendly gesture.

“Molly, I value your friendship dearly,” Sherlock mumbles hesitantly, “however I don’t have romantic inclinations.”

“Except for John.”

When she says it, it must bring her some kind of comfort. That it’s really not a personal offence – that Sherlock does value her and often has tried to correct his behaviour to save her from emotional harm. It’s _not_ her, he’s just… Sherlock.

And Sherlock is in love with John Watson.


	5. Chapter 5

**I trust you will be back soon?**  
**SH**

After receiving Sherlock’s text, John had almost called a taxi right then and there. However, there was no expressed need for John’s immediate departure and so he had reassured Sherlock and stayed to the end of his shift. It was less than a half hour before he was due to finish and yet it was the longest half hour of his life.

The clock on his wall had ticked and ticked, drawing out the seconds.

John had conjured images in his head – what might have happened had Sherlock not been found, writhing and mumbling on the coffee table. If he’d fallen and cracked his head or, God forbid, picked up a knife.

When he arrived home to see Sherlock in his armchair, looking no less fussy than John had left him, it was a welcome relief.

A warm feeling arose in him at the idea of seeing Sherlock, bundled up in his bedsheets with those fluffy curls all over the place. It’s a pleasant idea.

“How are we feeling?” John sends a happy nod to Molly as he arrives home, a plastic bag in his hand.

“Agitated, restless, feverish, need I go on?” Comes Sherlock’s unhappy mutter from his blanket hideaway

“Tired,” is Molly’s only complaint, no doubt due to Sherlock.

He sends her a thankful smile but doesn’t expressly say anything in Sherlock’s presence. And it’s not needed – John, Molly, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, and Mycroft care very deeply about the detective, no matter how flawed he is.

“I should be getting home.” Molly looks back at Sherlock and she gives him a happy smile for once. Not one of those awkward, nervous faces she makes around the man for whom she is deeply infatuated but rather one between friends.

“Good evening,” Sherlock dismisses, but it’s nicer than the way he usually leaves things between them.

His piercing gaze follows John across the room, to where the doctor stops in the kitchen and sets his plastic bag on the counter. He hears Sherlock get up from his spot but doesn’t quite look up yet.

“I got you a surprise on my way home, to congratulate you for how well you’re doing,” John explains, “I think you’ll find it quite—”

However, when John turns, his attention is immediately drawn to Sherlock’s mostly naked body. Behind him, the bedsheet is strewn over his armchair.

Sherlock’s eyes are unrelenting and his lips are silent. He’s forcing John to fill the moments with either actions or words and, thus far, the only thing John has accomplished is staring very openly at Sherlock’s svelte body.

“Tempting?” Sherlock drawls, sounding rather bored.

John blinks, then moves his eyes back up to Sherlock.

For a moment, he thinks he’s being propositioned. Then John notices one extra cut across the detective’s inner wrist, smaller than the ones on his thighs but still, regretfully, marking Sherlock’s body.

This is a test and Sherlock expects him to back away. To reject him, when his habits are on full display.

Track marks. Cuts. Gaunt body. Agitated twitching as the fight against drug withdrawal closes in. They’re things John is supposed to care about, superficially. And as this line of thought develops in his head, Sherlock is following it, piece by piece because he’s Sherlock Holmes.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“Where’s the razor, Sherlock?”

He gives it, willingly. Sherlock walked over to his skull and procured a smaller, thinner blade than the ones he’s seen before.

“I thought something unhealthy might cheer you up,” John redirects, drawing a packet of mini chocolate chip cookies from the bag and presents them to his friend. “Now, why don’t we put on a movie and you can stuff yourself with all things sugar?”

Moving away from the little test, Sherlock does seem to perk up. Sweets and biscuits tend to have that effect on the detective. He opens the biscuits immediately and stuffs one in his mouth. Somewhat reluctantly, he slowly moves the packet towards John as an offering.

John smiles and, instead, he tosses Sherlock’s bedsheet, draping him in the white cloth.

“I’m going to change,” he announces, “pick something and I’ll watch it with you when I get back.”

  
  


Today is the peak of Sherlock’s withdrawal and it shows.

John had stayed with him through the night without being asked – he was far too concerned that Sherlock would slip out and find one of his hidden stashes that he insisted upon staying, despite the fact that the detective would likely have beckoned him to the bed anyway.

_“Stay.”_

During the night, Sherlock had sweat and overheated to the point that John had to open a window in the room, just to help cool the man down.

So far, there’s been no begging or searching or drugs. Sherlock has been plagued with flu-like symptoms and a desperate craving to get morphine or cocaine or even heroin but he’s never breathed a word of his discomfort to John. Not even a complaint.

Thus far, Sherlock has been the perfect patient. He even tried to alert John during the night before he vomited off the side of the bed. It hadn’t been much help, but at least he tried to help John and not be an obstacle in his own way.

“John, another window?” Sherlock turns in his bed, leaving a body-shaped imprint from where he’s perspirated through the sheets.

“Think you can take some paracetamol for me?” He offers.

Sherlock doesn’t object. He grinds his face further into his bed and kicks out his legs in a jerky motion, so John leaves the room in favour of the kitchen.

At least if he can get Sherlock some relief for his fever, the process might be a bit easier on him. John would do anything to cut down on the chance that Sherlock will use again.

He finds the paracetamol hidden in an old box of cereal. It’s a bit silly, but the idea of Sherlock finding a packet and taking a handful is just too much for him to take. So the pills are hidden in a box of bran he can be _sure_ the detective won’t venture into.

He’s just on his way back into the hall with a glass of water when the doorbell rings.

Sighing, John looks between Sherlock’s room and the door before caving in and turning the handle.

Before him, an elderly couple looks both concerned and happy, all at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” John hesitates, “we’re not taking any clients at the minute.”

“Oh, no, we’re here to see Sherlock.” The woman smiles through thin lips. Mycroft told us he’d relapsed again and, well, we weren’t here for the last one…”

“Mycroft…” John stares between the two of them for a long moment. A man, smartly dressed and standing tall yet very expressive by the gleam in his eye. Then there’s the woman, much shorter with angular features and bright, sharp eyes.

Sherlock’s eyes.

“We’re his parents,” Mrs Holmes reaches out to rest her hand on his arm, smiling lightly, “of course Sherlock wouldn’t mention us.”

“My apologies.” John lurches out of the doorway, allowing them access. “Do come in – would you like a cup of tea?”

They accept his offer, giving John just enough time to wrap his head around all of this in the kitchen while trying to find the nicest tea set.

“He always mentions you, Dear.” Mrs Holmes catches his attention as he carries the tea through from the kitchen on a tray. It’s the nice set that Mrs Hudson had given them with the flat when they’d first moved in, among all of the other furniture.

Most of Sherlock’s contributions were either made of paper or human flesh.

“He does?” John startles, then closes his eyes briefly when Sherlock enters his mind. “I—I should get him for you. I’ll be right back.”

John sets the tray down and almost runs along the hall, looking behind him at the couple as he does. It’s hard to believe that two people so, to be frank, _ordinary_ could make Sherlock and Mycroft. They don’t seem like sociopaths at all.

“Sherlock?” John creeps into the other man’s bedroom, movements awkward. “Your… parents are here?”

That gets him moving.

Sherlock bolts upright, sheets falling around his waist. The minute John had left the bed, Sherlock had fully stripped and spread out, trying to reduce his fever. At the moment, there’s not much covering him. Sherlock seems to realise this and he topples from his bed, glistening in the grey light from the windows.

John averts his eyes to the other side of the room, envisioning the bumbling Mr and Mrs Holmes and then their neurotic children.

“They can’t see me, John, they don’t know!” Sherlock shouts, actually looking through the chest of drawers instead of his wardrobe, where most of his clothes are kept.

“But they were just talking about your last setback—”

“Use your _brain_ , John!”

John stops, takes in the image of Sherlock’s scarred forearms. “Oh.”

Over Sherlock’s shoulders, there doesn’t seem to be many items of clothing in the drawers but John is rather intrigued when he notices a glass case filled with dead insects, pinned and labelled on a board.

“Give me something of yours!” Sherlock turns too quickly and stumbles toward John instead of striding. His knees wobble as he grasps at John’s jumper. “A T-shirt –something with long sleeves!”

“Ok, ok.” John puts his hands up in surrender. “Lie down and I’ll find something.”

Thankfully, Sherlock obeys by the time John leaves. He’s quite unsure if the Holmes’ heard the shouting but an awkward smile in their direction is all the news he gives as he hurries to his bedroom.

Sherlock is much bigger than himself, John considers as he enters his room with mild trepidation. And preferably something dark, unless he wants his secret to be exposed the second he starts sweating.

_Sherlock Holmes in a T-shirt…_

  
  


“How lovely to see you, Mummy, Daddy.” Sherlock follows John into the kitchen, just managing to fit into one of John’s sleeping shirts. It clings to his slender body but, thankfully, it’s long enough on the arms.

John also lent him a black pair of sweatpants, knowing the material would feel easier on his thighs than jeans.

Sherlock really doesn’t do casual.

However, perhaps he should because John can’t quite keep his eyes off his friend’s body, albeit the sweaty, shivering, underweight body that it is.

“Was it a lot this time, Sherlock?” Mr Holmes greets his son with a brisk hug, paving the way for Mrs Holmes to cling to Sherlock for dear life.

“Nothing like the last t-time—” a shudder traverses his body as Mrs Holmes pulls away “—I promise.”

“You look awful,” Mrs Holmes states the obvious.

John can see how remarkably Sherlock is downplaying his symptoms, however. His face is incredibly red and, under the T-shirt, John has no doubt that he’s burning up. In fact, almost faint.

“Sit down, Sherlock,” John says, reaching for the glass of water and pill he’d left on the tray earlier.

Sherlock doesn’t look at him but John can see the grateful glint in his eye.

Once they’re all comfortably seated, Sherlock makes a good attempt not to tremble in his chair but even his parents must recognise the effects of withdrawal.

“John, these are my parents, Violet and Arthur.” Sherlock makes an effort at smiling but it looks pained.

“It’s lovely to meet you both.” John nods his head, smiling pleasantly. “I dare say, it’s going much better than my first meeting with Mycroft.”

“Oh, Mikey can be difficult but he’s really just a worrier.” Violet gives a glance to Sherlock unintentionally but the point is there.

“Always has been,” Arthur agrees, “mother hen, that one.”

John’s smile grows from ear to ear as he pats the arm of the sofa. “Mikey.”

That one, he’ll use. Along with Shezza, from that one time John caught a member of Sherlock’s homeless network skulking around the flat with information. He hadn’t liked the Master Chemist, as Sherlock had dubbed him.

“Sherlock, are you sure all of this won’t be easier on you at a hospital?” Violet insists and it’s clearly a topic they’ve talked about before, judging by Sherlock’s grimace at the mere mention of hospitalisation.

“John’s a doctor, Mummy, and he’s really managing things just as well as Mycroft on a good day so I see no need for further measures.” Is the clipped response.

When Violet looks to John, his heart skips uncomfortably.

“Sherlock’s at the peak of his withdrawal right now.” John glances over at his friend, whose eyes are now trained on him, blurry as they are. “However, by tomorrow he should start feeling better. Opiates can make for a rough withdrawal.”

He doesn’t mention the cocaine, which is a clear motivator for Sherlock’s low mood, or the heroin and Sherlock’s frequent complaints of joint pain.

When there’s no movement from Sherlock nor his parents, John looks at the empty glass he’d given Sherlock.

Sherlock’s eyes close when John takes the used teaware to the kitchen.

The longing in his gut calls for more than just drugs. The things he wants to say to John, things he’s regarded previously with a fair amount of derision, mull just past his lips. Things like “stay”.

“He’s a nice one, you know.” Violet regards John to Sherlock, making her son wince at what must be a rather obvious train of thought.

“Mummy, I’m not—”

It’s something John would say. _I’m not gay_ , over and over again. And John may very well know but Sherlock, with all his intellectual prowess, cannot navigate the fields of attraction with simple ease.

Sherlock has never considered his orientation to be something that was urgent for him to understand.

Despite Mycroft and all the women he talked into his bed. Despite his parents, a perfect archetype of an ideal couple. Despite Molly’s advances and Lestrade’s failed marriages and the ongoing affair between Anderson and Donovan – despite it all, he’s never truly considered the concept of attraction.

He likes John, that much is clear. John evokes Sherlock’s interest and/or liking, therefore, it would be a correct statement to say that Sherlock is attracted to John.

Sherlock’s infrequent masturbatory habits are well-ranged in the sexes and should provide an adequate answer, however, his pulse is racing and drugs are far from his mind.

“That is to say, I’m not—” _Not what?_ “Entirely—”

“It’s alright, Sherlock.” Arthur looks between his wife and his son. “We can talk about it more comfortably later.”

Violet nods her head, reaching forward to hold her son’s hand across the coffee table. “We are not the best parents, Sherry, but I think we are better ones than you give us credit for being.”

Sherlock’s mouth parts, his eyes moving between his mother and father before dropping to the table. Instead of responding, he reaches for his cup of tea which, thankfully, John left. As the aforementioned man returns to the room, he glances at Sherlock and his disagreeable expression.

“Time for some rest?” John offers, giving him an excuse to hide from the agonizing conversation.

“Please.”

Violet stands up, recognising the polite dismissal for what it is. “Dear, as long as you’re happy.”

Sherlock grimaces when John tosses him a look but pays it no mind.

“Yes, Mummy, Daddy, thank you for visiting,” he acknowledges. His hand does, however, reach out for John’s sleeve, rushing the process along. 

John’s eyebrows twitch at the word but he says nothing as he helps Sherlock to stand up, then aids his sweaty, overheating body along the hall to his bedroom, where he can finally rest.

_”Daddy?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to add a special mention to everyone leaving kudos and comments on this fanfic. It's very enjoyable to write and I'm thankful for all the appreciation :)


	6. Chapter 6

_“John, these are my parents, Violet and Arthur.”_

John clearly remembers Sherlock’s father being introduced as Arthur. He was a tall man with kind eyes, unlike the sharp eyes of his family members. Sherlock and Mycroft have cold, unfeeling eyes which are usually matched with an equally cold attitude. They have looks that could cut you. Violet, now, she had a warm disposition but her eyes were intelligent.

Arthur didn’t immediately give off such a daunting aura. His eyes are punctuated with deep crow’s feet, etching joy into his face. And, yes, he was taller than Sherlock but he walked with a slump, making him seem much more like a gentle giant than the subject of Sherlock’s persistent self-destructive habits.

He’d seemed worried and kind.

So, as Sherlock walked beside him, John can’t help but want to ask about “Siger”. Either Mycroft lied to him, which seems the much more plausible option, or Sherlock’s family history is more complicated than John had believed.

Despite everything, the fact that Mycroft clearly dubbed Siger as their _father_ should raise alarms, as Sherlock clearly called Arthur his father in that posh boy way of his.

Sherlock, however, looks a little uncomfortable. It’s been a long week but the withdrawal symptoms should finally have died away. Proof of this should be in the fact that Sherlock decided to bring John along on an outing.

Angelo’s, Sherlock had decided and said very little otherwise.

His face is tucked away behind the raised collar of his coat, hiding him right up to those sharp cheekbones, and his signature scarf is hugging his neck.

John looks for a moment longer, which is just enough time for him to see Sherlock startle. He almost tripped, eyes trained straight ahead in worry.

Around them, there’s not much aside from people in the street. A woman with a pram, a few teenagers, a man with a cane, and an elderly woman with glasses.

John reaches out to grab him but Sherlock catches himself first. His eyes snap at John, considering him, then dart away just as quickly.

“Talk.”

John tilts his head.

“About anything,” Sherlock clarifies. He tucks his hands into his pockets, drawing his coat in tighter around his body. “Quickly, John.”

“Oh,” John stammers, “um, well… Harry’s been in touch.”

“Sober?” Sherlock’s voice cuts through him before John can think to mention it. “Are you going to reconcile?”

“Reconcile?” John chuckles.

“Why not?” Sherlock frowns in that way that he does when trying to understand sentiment. “ Dear Harriet is sober. Unless it is not the drinking you have a problem with…”

The last part is muttered but John catches it and, immediately, he feels himself becoming defensive.

“What exactly do you mean?”

“Nothing.” Sherlock turns his face.

John sighs.

“Harry left home as a teenager, just after she came out to our mum,” John explains, allowing the statement to stand for itself. “I never saw her until after the war.”

John can remember the day his awful mother sent Harry from her home but it’s not something he cares to dwell on.

“I told you, Sherlock – boys, girls, it’s all fine.”

John’s soft reassurance is met with a swift “I know it’s fine”, just like before. However, this time, Sherlock doesn’t ward him off with his marriage to his work.

That’s when John’s thoughts pause and focus on what is actually happening. Sherlock’s been uneasy all evening, almost as if he’s nervous. John frowns, then glances towards Sherlock as he tries to piece it all together.

_“It’s where two people who like each other go out and have fun.”_

Before John can pester Sherlock with questions, they arrive at Angelo’s. John holds the door open for Sherlock, who eyes him studiously before entering the restaurant.

Billy, the server, leads them to the same table as last time. It’s right beside the large, picture window and John is quite unsure if Sherlock made a reservation or if they just showed up.

Angelo, the greasy, little owner of the restaurant looks just as delighted to see Sherlock as the last time.

“Sherlock, Sherlock!” He throws his arm around Sherlock’s shoulders and smiles widely. “All on the house, for you and your date.”

“Thank you.” Sherlock nods once, looking perturbed by the interruption.

The corners of John’s lips turn up, as they always do when Sherlock has to muddle his way around accepting appreciation. In an ideal world, John thinks Sherlock would come and go, no-one ever hearing his name. Of course, in said scenario, there would be no-one to doubt him in the first place – hence, no need to show off – and the intelligent shadow of a consulting detective would be lost to the night.

“I get you a candle.” Angelo winks at John, who doesn’t feel quite as unsettled as last time.

“Sherlock.” John leans in closer, trying to catch some eye contact. “Do we want the candle?”

“Logically, I cannot speak for your preferences, ergo the only possible answer to your question could be that I do not know.”

“Oh no,” John hums, “you didn’t say no. I asked if we wanted the candle and, without knowing my answer, you could only answer that you don’t know or that, no, _we_ don’t want the candle. So if you don’t know…”

Sherlock raises his menu, lifting it high enough to cover his face from John.

Angelo reappears, whether they want the candle or not, sets down a candle between them and then lights it. John looks at it.

“You want the candle.”

Sherlock sets the menu down, scowling. “Candles are an adequate source of light.”

“Are we on a bloody date, Sherlock?”

Sherlock’s long fingers move towards the candle and stroke the rim of the glass, considering. 

“You’re not gay.” Sherlock pushes the candle across the table towards John.

“No,” John relents, then reaches out to push the candle back in Sherlock’s direction. “But there are more things to be than gay in this world.”

“John.” Sherlock’s eyes are on his.

It occurs to John that Sherlock might not have done this before. Might not have been on a date, or whatever they were doing. John hasn’t dated a man but his shoulders aren’t as stiff as Sherlock’s seem to be, nor do his eyes dart away quite so frequently.

“I don’t object to the candle, Sherlock,” John assures him.

That seems to do the trick. Sherlock slowly moves the candle to the middle of the table, then takes a long, slow breath.

  
  


It was nice, talking about old casework and getting brief – very brief – glimpses into Sherlock’s history (apparently Sherlock first met Lestrade during a case in which a body was found in a sauna; however, it turned out that the person in question had died of hypothermia).

However, the polite conversation is soon out of the way – and Sherlock _was_ being particularly polite.

“So who is Siger?” The question is personal and he doesn’t want Sherlock to startle, so he keeps any accusation out of his voice.

Sherlock pauses for a moment, then lowers his head.

“I’m sorry.” John reaches out for Sherlock’s hand before he realises what that could imply, especially to those around him. “You said his name before you fainted and the next day…”

“Siger is my father.” Sherlock blurts out, much more openly than John had expected him to. “Dr Siger Holmes, professor of mathematics at Oxford University.”

Sherlock gasps in his next breath, having blurted out the words so suddenly.

“So the man I met…”

“Arthur married my mother after Siger left.” Sherlock’s brows furrow together. His eyes are focused on John’s hand, reaching out for his. Tentatively, Sherlock trails a shaky thumb over John’s knuckles.

“I’m sorry,” John says politely.

“You have questions.” Sherlock insists but John shakes his head.

“Not if it’s too difficult for you to talk about.” John frees his hand, scoops up some pasta on his fork and eats the mouthful before glancing up at Sherlock.

“I,” Sherlock murmurs, “appreciate that.”

“Wow, you really are on your best behaviour,” John teases lightheartedly and, for a second, Sherlock looks perplexed. Then his laugh comes out earnestly, right alongside John’s.

“Tell me, is this what your suitors get to see?”

Sherlock’s still smiling but it becomes something softer at that moment. Shy, almost.

“I haven’t dated,” he admits, stabbing his fork into a spare strip of chicken.

“I figured,” John says while Sherlock chews, “what with you being preoccupied with the game.”

Sherlock swallows, then considers John carefully. He drops his cutlery beside his plate and reaches out his hand once more. When John lays his out for Sherlock to reach, the detective hesitates in actually touching John. His hand floats over John’s for several seconds before dropping into his touching.

“Not so preoccupied.” Sherlock spreads out his fingers along John’s arm, lightly tracing his skin. The extended touch feels more intimate than his brief interactions with others. With John, the touch is heated and comfortable.

John’s hand is strong – his fingers feel thick and the back of his hand is dusted with hair. Strangely, John’s manliness isn’t unappealing to Sherlock. Sherlock’s hands are long, thin, and calloused from playing the violin, especially on his fingertips. His hands are different from John’s, especially while looking at them intertwined like this.

Slowly, Sherlock traces his fingers over the pulse point in John’s wrist. It’s racing.

  
  


Sherlock hesitates at his bedroom door. He’s wearing John’s T-shirt and sweats and, despite being washed since Sherlock sweat right through them, the clothes still smell like John. It’s a masculine smell with no exceptional quality but Sherlock appreciates the boring quality all the same.

Slowly, he opens his door and strides into the living room, where John is switching between TV channels. He stands beside John’s chair, gaining the attention he wanted.

John looks up, then sends John a smile with worried undertones.

“Everything alright?” John asks.

That’s when Sherlock leans in until they’re practically breathing the same air. John can feel the heat radiating from Sherlock, can feel him edging closer until their lips touch.

It’s an awkward kiss. Sherlock obviously doesn’t have much practice and his jaw is clenched shut. However, John takes pleasure in touching his partner so intimately, so closely, even if it is a bit chaste.

It’s certainly not unpleasant.

John reaches up to Sherlock’s face with one hand, gently stroking his thumb across his cheek until he can feel the tension edging away. Sherlock’s body moves in closer and his lips move with more fluidity. As the tension dissipates, the kiss grows sweeter.

Having Sherlock so close in his grasp is intimate. If John had to choose a word, it would likely be ‘snug’. His brain only seems to be concerned with the gentle warmth of Sherlock’s mouth against his own, stirring up feelings in his chest that appear to be more powerful than he once thought.

Sherlock finally pulls away, half-lidded and red in the face as he processes what just happened.

Neither of them talk and the television soon becomes the only noise in the room besides their stilted breathing.

Sherlock looks somewhere between running away and pressing John against the wall, so John moves over in his armchair so there’s enough room for Sherlock to sit at his side.

Sherlock softens at this, his eyes meeting John’s for a fleeting second before Sherlock rounds the chair and curls in beside him, knees draped over John’s.

“Not gay?” Sherlock whispers into his neck.

“Not gay,” John confirms, but his lips reach down to Sherlock’s forehead and gently press kisses against his face.

_Not gay_ but he’s gay for Sherlock Holmes.


	7. Chapter 7

The kiss had provoked something deep within Sherlock.

He’d froze, just for a moment, at the titillating yet harrowing feeling of skin touching skin. John, however, knew exactly what to do. _John always knows what to do_. The entire night, he held Sherlock quite chastely, sensing in the very least his hesitance if not his agitation.

The night, however, took a turn for the worst.

Firstly he’d dreamed of a rather large garden. Overgrown as it was, a clear path cut through the knee-high grass into the distance, extending past his timid sight and into the shadows. So he’d walked and walked, with shorter strides than he’s used to.

In the shadowy throat of ivy and bramble, he’d come face to face with Redbeard. Sherlock, in a moment of childish delight, had reached out for his beloved pet. Redbeard’s fur ruffled under his hands but then the Irish Setter looked up at him and bared his teeth.

_“Get off me!” His voice was lost in the trappings of the duvet. ___

Sherlock drew his hands back.

_Ivy drew his hands down into the springy earth, swallowing him into a great darkness._

Redbeard lunged over his head.

_Biotoxins are poisonous products of organisms. They have two functions in nature: predation and defence. They seep into others, to attack all that they encounter, and to cause complete destruction._

_Then they ensure their own protection._

Looking at Redbeard’s bloody teeth was the last of the dream and the great detective shook himself to wakefulness.

He’s in his own bedroom. He recognises the comfortable sparseness but something is niggling at his brain. After all, most of his things clutter the kitchen table or the various surfaces in the living room. There are two old bookcases, filled to the brim, on either side of his wardrobe and he scans the spines.

  
  


Sherlock’s eyes sweep the room before settling on John, who is quietly bustling around the kitchen with a pinched expression. Along with the pale box displayed on the coffee table, Sherlock can take a guess at what triggered such a reaction.

“Your brother delivered a cake,” John reliably informs him.

The old book on his shelf brought Mycroft’s visit to his attention before he left his room, then there’s the matter of Sherlock’s favourite comfort food sitting in the living room.

Mycroft had presented him with _Rivers Blue and Jonathan Green_ on his tenth birthday, a year before Sherlock started to look at the boys in his class with anything other than contempt. It was a parting gift as his brother, seven years his senior, left for Oxford.

Mummy and Siger had never known, of course, of the nights he spent pouring over that sordid, honest, challenging book. Mycroft knew without knowing, of course. Sometimes he would cry, sometimes he would smile, and, in the midst of his teenage years, the more provocative chapters would be dog-eared.

For Sherlock, _Rivers Blue_ pushed him through the nights when his stomach ached persistently and moving became impossible. Jonathan Green and his intimate relationship with Hector Roth had shaped his early understanding because, yes, there was a time when he didn’t know it was fine.

Obviously, his spying brother, mocking as he appears to be, would have wanted Sherlock to know it’s fine because sometimes, he admits, he still isn’t so sure.

Hence, the bright yellow buttercream cake calling out to Sherlock from the coffee table.

Sherlock fingers the frosting then licks away the sweet mouthful. Say what he must about Mycroft, the man did know his cake.

Oh, the Holmes boys and their sweet teeth.

“Do I want to know why your brother sent a cake?” John crosses the room. “And why he’s asking about a happy announcement?”

“I can only imagine he’s quite pleased that I’ve found someone to kiss after all these years.” Sherlock reaches for another finger of icing, leaving one half of the cake untouched, as it is for John as well. Choosing his words carefully, he turns to face his partner. “Though, I suspect you knew that.”

“Sherlock Holmes.” John’s smile is innocent as he reaches for his icing-free hand. “Are there cameras in this apartment again?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Find them.” John’s lips press against his own gently in a chaste but enjoyable kiss. John hasn’t shaved for the day and the scruff of his growing hair is stimulating. In fact, it’s all so stimulating that Sherlock’s heart is about to burst out of his chest and serenade John right there on the spot.

“And do be quick, I’m making breakfast.” His breath is hot and suffocating against Sherlock’s mouth, leaving his throat feeling dry as John pulls away.

The cameras are located in seconds.

  
  


In the middle of the day, when half of the cake is gone and Sherlock glances to John’s half turn less than innocent, Lestrade knocks on the door of 221B. His brow is sweaty and pulled tight yet his expression changes upon examining the yellow cake and collection of small cameras.

“Come cake, Inspector?” John offers, closing the door behind the DI, who raises his eyebrows in mild surprise.

“Well, I really shouldn’t but,” Greg considers, “oh, go on.”

As John cuts his way into the buttercream delight, Greg draws Sherlock’s attention. From his pocket, he procures an evidence bag with a scrap of paper inside.

“First a drug test,” Lestrade conditions, “we’ll be visiting Molly Hooper and, as long as you’re clean, I’ll give you the case.”

Sherlock eyes the paper, the inscriptions on which are purposefully being obscured.

“Yes, very well.” Sherlock stands up eagerly, despite his displeasure at what is about to happen.

At Bart’s, cornered by Lestrade, John, and Molly, Sherlock finds himself very displeased indeed, true to his initial dread. The plastic cup on Molly’s desk is filled with dark yellow urine, almost amber in the sterile white light of the morgue. It’s mostly full, even after the immunoassay test.

John rubs at his forehead at the sickly colour but says nothing.

“You’re clean.” Molly looks happy, almost proud. It’s an expression mimicked by Lestrade. John, however, remained confident in Sherlock and the test didn’t change his demeanour in the slightest, for John’s praise came a week ago. He knew Sherlock was clean.

Sherlock bristles as Lestrade pats him on the back but the evidence bag is in his hands before he can start to object.

“Henry Cubitt found dead of a bullet to the head and his partner gravely wounded from a gunshot to the chest,” Lestrade explains.

Sherlock’s eyes narrow as Lestrade bites into the cake John decided to bring in napkins for both he and Molly.

“Your brother got this?” Lestrade gestures to the treat in mild interest.

“When was this brought to your attention?” Sherlock’s sweeps a glance over the detective. Calm, constricted pupils and a lax posture prove Lestrade didn’t come from a crime scene. Not to mention his appetite and interest in such mundane matters as Mycroft Holmes.

“Week ago.” He says around a mouthful. “No-one thought it was anything unusual until we found that on Elsie Patrick’s body and several others around the house.”

“Girlfriend?” John inquires.

“Fiancee, three days before the wedding.”

Sherlock’s eyes run over the paper. On it dance 15 stick figures in different forms. He hands it to John, closing his eyes slowly.

“This again?” The other man protests.

“It helps.” Sherlock insists and, really, it does.

“Alright,” John sighs, “well, it’s a drawing. A child’s drawing, I would say. A prank, maybe?”

When John trails off, Sherlock’s eyes open.

“It is certainly a curious production,” he said, “yet these hieroglyphics evidently have a meaning.”

Sherlock holds the paper up to the nearest light and examines it for a short time. It’s a page torn from a notebook. Words like translucent, uncoated, and absorbent rush at him while pressure on the page, a lack of smudging, and various ink clumps in the characters themselves imply _ballpoint pen_.

Nothing of interest there.

“I suspect the meaning is systematic but this particular sample is so short that I can’t do anything with it.”

Sherlock manages to preserve his professional manner but it’s obvious to John, who knows him so well, that he’s profoundly excited. Finally, there was a case.

  
  


No more tea for Sherlock, John decides as he plants the water in front of his flatmate. He doesn’t need diuretics at the moment, especially when he tends to neglect himself on cases. For two hours, John watched him pour himself over scribbles of men dancing (that is, before acknowledging the chalk inscriptions in and around Cubitt and Patrick’s accommodation).

Sherlock had covered sheet after sheet with figures and letters, so completely absorbed that he missed dinner, not unusual, and Lestrade leaving, also not unusual.

When, however, his mobile starts to ring and Sherlock makes no indication that he plans on moving, John steps in.

_The Understudy_ is calling.

“Hello?” John draws the phone to his ear. “John Watson speaking.”

“John, Dearie, we’re so happy about the news!” He recognises the elderly voice as Sherlock’s very ordinary mother.

_“I’ll be mother.”_

_“There’s a whole childhood in a nutshell.”_

Ah, yes. Mycroft’s understudy. Very clever, Holmes.

“The news?” John wonders how they could have possibly have heard about the case.

“You and Sherlock!” Mrs Holmes sounds a bit too enthusiastic. Though, the prospect of at least one of her sons being in a relationship must have her over the moon. Mycroft doesn’t seem the loving boyfriend type.

“Oh,” John murmurs, “yes, we very much enjoyed the cake Mycroft sent.”

“Oh, he would, wouldn’t he? He’s always bustling around Sherlock like that.” Violet Holmes sighs pleasantly. “We wanted to know if the both of you will be coming over for Christmas. Mycroft is able to make it this year.”

“That sounds grand.” John could barely dash her hopes of having her sons together for the holidays. He can’t imagine Sherlock has been all too cooperative in the past years.

“Wonderful!” She proclaims, “Well, I’ll let you boys get back to your case.”

“How did you know…?”

“Cheerio!”

A little frazzled, John looks up to meet Sherlock’s eyes.

“What did you sign me up to?” His eyes narrow, expression growing more and more pinched as John explains. Funnily enough, he doesn’t get an outburst of anger or discontent. Instead, Sherlock averts his eyes to the scraps of paper. “Mummy must expect us to share a room.”

So it’s that kind of conversation.

“I sleep with you most nights now, anyway,” John points out.

Sherlock concedes this. John’s never refused his soft beckoning of “stay”.

“Your mother seemed quite pleased,” John changes the subject, moving to stand beside Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Why, yes.” A mischevious glint works its way into Sherlock’s eyes as he looks up at the doctor. “I imagine Mummy is very pleased that I’ve found myself a strapping soldier. And a doctor at that!”

John flushes as he reaches down to kiss Sherlock, who responds with eagerness. Their lips blend together in wet heat until John finally inches back.

“You’re dehydrated,” John whispers into his mouth.

Sherlock smiles toothily then his hand is in John’s hair, drawing him in for another sensual embrace.

“Tell me what you've found.” John grins, moving his mouth lower to Sherlock’s jawline, kissing gently along his sharp edges.

“It’s a substitution cypher, easily cracked by frequency analysis.” Sherlock blurts out, engaging in a thick stream of word vomit. “ _E_ is the most common letter in the English language, _th_ is the most common bigram, and _the_ is the most common trigram. Simple, really, why they hadn’t even made use of homophonic substitution”

John grins against Sherlock’s neck, continuing to work his way down Sherlock’s neck. The skin there flushes under the stimulating touch.

“The cypher isn’t difficult – no, it doesn’t need to be difficult – because no one suspects it to be a code, instead considering it childish scribblings. The advantage of steganography over cryptography alone is that the secret message doesn’t attract attention to itself as an object of scrutiny, John. Plainly visible encrypted messages, no matter how unbreakable they are, arouse interest…”

When Sherlock stops speaking, trailing off as if he ran out of words, John pulls away and looks at him with concern, only to find pure embarrassment.

Then he looks down and Sherlock’s arousal is unmistakeably hard between his legs.

Sherlock Holmes has an erection.


End file.
